User Guide

212 ActionScript language elements
Variables can hold any data type (for example, String, Number, Boolean, Object, or
MovieClip). The Timeline of each SWF file and movie clip has its own set of variables, and
each variable has its own value independent of variables on other Timelines.
Strict data typing is not supported inside a
set statement. If you use this statement to set a
variable to a value whose data type is different from the data type associated with the variable
in a class file, no compiler error is generated.
A subtle but important distinction to bear in mind is that the parameter
variableString is a
string, not a variable name. If you pass an existing variable name as the first parameter to
set() without enclosing the name in quotation marks (""), the variable is evaluated before
the value of
expression is assigned to it. For example, if you create a string variable named
myVariable and assign it the value "Tuesday," and then forget to use quotation marks, you
will inadvertently create a new variable named
Tuesday that contains the value you intended
to assign to
myVariable:
var myVariable:String = "Tuesday";
set (myVariable, "Saturday");
trace(myVariable); // outputs Tuesday
trace(Tuesday); // outputs Saturday
You can avoid this situation by using quotation marks (""):
set ("myVariable", "Saturday");
trace(myVariable); //outputs Saturday
Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Lite 2.0
Parameters
variableString:String - A string that names a variable to hold the value of the
expression parameter.
Example
In the following example, you assign a value to a variable. You are assigning the value of
"Jakob" to the name variable.
set("name", "Jakob");
trace(name);
The following code loops three times and creates three new variables, called caption0,
caption1, and caption2:
for (var i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
set("caption" + i, "this is caption " + i);
}
trace(caption0);
trace(caption1);
trace(caption2);